Down by the river

 The next weekend after my trip to Korea (11/6), our cultural activities director, Kitano-san, kindly invited a bunch of the UC students to her house in Inadazutsumi as a sort of "cooking school". Before the class started, we headed down to the riverbank near Tama River, which is one of the major rivers in Japan, for a delicious BBQ. We barbecued chicken legs, vegetables, and cooked Yakisoba.

Group picture with Kitano-san

Me and Erica

The traditional jumping picture

Some of the other UC students

My version of cleaning up.

After the BBQ, we headed back up to her house and learned how to make miso soup and something I can't remember the name of. Then, we enjoyed some coffee, tea, wine, and video games to wrap up our time together. 

Name? but yummy!

Kitano-san's house

And of course we had to go to drinking at yet another izakaya in Yokohama. This one was nice because everything was 250円!

Me with the Koreans

The next day (11/7) we headed to one of my favorite restaurants in Japan, called デザート王国, which literally means Dessert Kingdom. Japan has this nasty habit of making a time limit for all of their 食べ放題 (all-you-can-eat buffet). So this place is all-you-can-eat for 70 minutes, which includes drinks, salad, pasta, hashi rice, and best of all, DESSERT! My favorite is the chocolate fountain, in which I put bananas, pineapple, waffles, melon bread, and marshmallows and utterly smother them all in chocolate. 

DESSERT!!!

Sheena, Lucy, Max, and I don't know who that weird person is

Also, I wish to take this time to share my favorite route to campus, which luckily happens to be the most scenic route and the fastest. Convenient, right? And yes, there are 4 total routes that I know of, all of which take about 40 minutes to get to class. This is excluding the lazy and expensive route, which includes taking the bus for a grand total of 210円 one way. And may I mention that even though it is currently December 3, I still sweat as I walk to school. So much for that gigantic winter coat you sent me Mom...

Surrounded by bamboo trees

My school is just beyond this hill

The way up

Even though I'm still about 3 weeks behind in my blog, I sort of like it this way. Time is just moving too fast, and this blog is helping me slow my life down. I've been reflecting on all the fun times I've had. It feels so unreal that I'll be home in just 2 and a half weeks. So, I am taking advantage of every single moment I can to make the most of my numbered days. However, I keep forgetting I have this thing called school and homework, both of which have been non-existent for the past 89 days, so I guess it's okay. Oh, and I've just about finished buying お土産 (souvenirs) for all of you back home. But just a warning, I judged the souvenir based on cuteness and not really on practicality (except for you Dad. You were very hard to find a present for, but luckily I just came across something that you can actually use). Anyways, that's about it for now. Sayonnara!